NaPoWriMo 2018 - Day 17

April 17th
Today's prompt is to write a poem that re-tells a family anecdote.



The streets ran red
With blood
As the rebels
Cut off the head
Of every member
Of the ruling class
Of every member
Of the aristocracy
Of my family
Of my friends.

Living on the run
Never ends.
How do I know
If they are friend or foe?
I'm next
I know I'm next
If they find me

I will be found guilty
Without prejudice

I will be marched out
To that killing machine
The guillotine
As crowds surround
And wait
For my date with fate.

And so a few good blokes
Find a way for me to make my escape
They bribe some sailors

Find me a way out
An apple barrel
They stow me inside
Roll me aboard

It is cramped
And smells strongly of apples
When I feel the rocking
Of the high seas
I climb out with difficulty

The voyage is long
The seas are rough
I do not have sea legs
The sea is not my friend
The boat is tossed
From wave to wave
And never again
Will I see my friends
Who my life did save.

I make my way to the Americas
The United States
Here, I have a future
Here, I can have a family
For centuries my ancestors will breathe

The airs
of freedom
of equality.

Here I do not have to fear
My countrymen
Arresting me
And chopping off my head
Making the streets run red
With my spilt blood.

And as grateful as I am
For that cramped ride
The smell of apples has never left me
But I am grateful to be alive .

Every day we are alive is a good day

-Sharon

NaPoWriMo 2018 - Day 16

The craft resource from napowrimo.net today was one encouraging you not to focus too much on the "craft" of writing poetry. As Maureen sums it up:

"Thinking hard thoughts about word choice, line breaks, sound, and structure can help to make a poem better, but too much emphasis on perfection can breed stale, airless verse."

If I'm quite honest, most of the time, I don't think too much about those things - I often defer to free-verse. And while that can produce nice poems - perhaps coarse and unrefined, yet straightforward - I think for me, it's just laziness. My poems are hit-or-miss and sometimes focusing on the form really forces me to think about it more and sometimes, I think, has a good result.

I guess maybe it comes down to this: don't over-think your poetry, but don't under-think it either.

Anyway I digress. Today's prompt (see link above), was to write a poem that features play. I tried to do so in both the shape of the poem itself (it makes one of my nephews' names - can you see it?) and the content. Hope you enjoy!

Note: I'm not sure how this will show up in other views because the shape is not really embedded, so I suspect for best viewing purposes you'll want a computer browser.

Another Note: This was a pain to do and I probably won't do it again, but it was kinda fun. Tell me what you think :)

Last note: Read it as normal: from left to right. It might be a bit confusing and if so, I apologize (perhaps this should have been my approach to the comfort zone poem).

Without further ado:


Toddlers at Play

The world                   is                  still            a                    mystery    to a toddler.
Everything                  is               strange        and               new.           A fresh
perspective.               Play             is how        they        explore            the
world. A                    purse           can be         a toy.    First                   the
zipper. Now              what's            inside?      Dump it                          out.
Does this key            open              this            tic-tac                             container? Is
this a maraca?           Do                 these         two   connect?              Can I have
your pen?                    If                I blow         does      this                    make
a sound? Oh!               You           booped        my             nose!            That's
funny! My turn!              Now       you!               Can                    I           have that?
I do not understand       toddler games            but                      it's        fun to play along.

NaPoWriMo 2018 - Day 15

Late poem today. Was running around with my sisters; ultimately our plans didn't work out which was a huge let-down. Oh well, April marches on.

April 15th

Today's prompt is to write a poem which makes a villain more human, but still a villain. I admit, I had a lot of trouble deciding on a villain and then once I did, I had trouble figuring out how to make him seem human, but I actually like the end result. Plus there's a twist-ending!

The Riddler

Riddle me this
Riddle me that
What makes the sound pitter patter
And rhymes with bat?
Riddle me here
Riddle me there
What ticks and tocks
And is under your chair?
Riddle me who
Riddle me how
If you know what's best
You'll answer me now.

Talking in riddles can be so tiring
But how else can I seem frightening?

I know it seems tough
I know it seems wrong
But I once wasn't so gruff.

The truth resides in this rhyme.
I do more than evil
I cause more than crime

My life was once simple
But now it's sublime.

When I was a boy
My family didn't have much at all
My greatest desire was one simple toy
A ball

My father worked hard
He worked all day long
And one day a ball appeared in the yard.

I took it to the store
I took it to the school
It was my prized possession; we were so poor.

Then one afternoon
An older boy cornered me
Taking my toy, he was a goon.

He teased and he taunted
"Answer my riddle and your ball, I'll return."
His superior intellect, he flaunted.

"What is impossible by night, but doable by day?"
An answer, I could not produce
So with my toy; he ran away.

I vowed then
I vowed there
Never would anyone ever
Best me again.

Now when I'm not out riddling,
When in prison, I'm not sitting,
In the library, you will find me - I'll be reading
I read to the small
I read to the sad
I read to the weak
I read to the poor.

I read to them all
But I do some more

I teach them that life isn't nice
It's not fair;
I show them they don't need to share.

Reading aside; make no mistake
Cross me and see
If you can best me intellectually.

I'll give you a puzzle
So difficult
You will go insane
They'll haul you right off
They'll take you away

They'll check you into
Arkhum Asylum
You will be quite inane
There we will reunite
And I will puzzle and prod
Til out your ears drips your brain
It will be quite the sight!

Now off I must go to find that original bully
The Dark Knight!

Reading your comments makes writing twice as nice!

-Sharon

NaPoWriMo 2018 - Day 14

Two whole weeks! And currently, I am up-to-date. I did have a brief lapse at the end of week 1, but I jumped back on the wagon and haven't fallen off again since!

Today's prompt is an interesting one: take some words provided by Maureen and create a dream dictionary. I don't know about you, but I've looked up meanings of dreams quite a bit (most frequently: out of control cars, teeth falling out, and it seems like there was another one but I can't recall [just like most of my dreams]). Anyways, back to the prompt, I thought I would take a slightly different approach with this one and smash the words into one dream and make up a meaning for that.

Dear Dream Interpreter Betsy,

I've had the strangest dream; I hope you can interpret it for me:

I searched for a lost ballet slipper
I was going to be late for ballet class
But I could only find a dainty teacup
With a chip taken out of it.

Satisfied with this find,
I left my house
And wound up at the dentist.
He was wielding a hammer
And informed me that
I didn't have an appointment
But he could fit me in
As soon as he dispatched
A squawking seagull.

A little uneasy, alarmed and queasy,
I ran out of his office
Only to fall in the ocean
Just as I bobbed to the top
I realized I was being chased
By a toothsome shark
Who I told needed to see the dentist
Because he had holes in some of his teeth.

I was plucked out of the ocean
By a winsome sailor
Just before the toothy shark
Was able to bite my toes
Which were wearing the lost
Ballet slippers, by the way
He set me down
In a tiny rowboat,
Handed me the oars,
And yelled "man overboard"
As backwards he disembarked.

I rowed to a desert island
Where the only structure
Was a wobbly table
Which winked at me
I sat under it
To take shelter from an approaching storm
As the rain began to fall,
I awoke.

-Honestly Insomnia Would Be Better

Hello Honestly Insomnia!

I'm quite glad you wrote me.

What a dream!

It is full of important

Symbology.

First lets look at the dominant themes

I see:

Ballet, teeth, and all things nautical.

Right away this suggests

You tend to foray

With the uncouth

And aquatical.

More specifically,

Your dream suggests that you feel small and incomplete

You tend to lose your way

(If you have trouble sleeping, you really ought to count sheep!)

The dentist with the hammer has a double meaning:

You feel unequipped for the mundane

But also you desire to put an end

To something annoying and superfluous

At an undecided time.

Sometimes you feel like you lack direction

You are afraid

Of being hurt 

by a dominant figure in your life

Who you see as

flawed and incomplete.

Sometimes you feel as though others give you direction

But don't help you at all

And when you follow their directions

You feel sufficiently equipped

But things don't tend to go well.

Still, things tend to be okay.

My suggestion?

Do whatever you want.

Clearly you know what's best.

And if I'm wrong,

My advice is still

Ironically

spot on.

Well, that was fun!

-Sharon

NaPoWriMo 2018 - Day 13

Welcome to Friday the 13th!

Today's prompt is to take a common phrase, take the opposite of it, and then use that as inspiration for a poem.

Indifference birthed the dog

They say
Indifference birthed the dog
That's really odd to say
That such a nice creature
could be created in such a way.

"Ah but," the scientists say,
"evolution is indifferent;
wouldn't you say?"

Scientist to scientist, I think you're wrong
Because in a different verse of that same song,
You pontificate that great phrase
'Survival of the fittest'
That is the way
That natural selection occurs.

And survival of the fittest
Is really just taking a positive spin
of
Discontinuance of the unsuitable
Which is just quite grim.

And furthermore,
to anyone who believes
"Curiosity killed the cat"
I hope you are answered with a resounding chorus of:
"Knowledge brought him back."

Without curiosity where would we be?
No one would question anything.
Scientists would not be around
To elaborate on why some fossils can't be found.

Curiosity is beneficial
And I think we can all concur
That indifference is bad

And if you are indifferent on the matter,
well then
that's quite sad.

Happy poem-ing,

Sharon

NaPoWriMo 2018 - Day 12

April 12th
"Today, we’d like to challenge you specifically to write a haibun that takes in the natural landscape of the place you live."

A haibun is a poem that combines a prose poem and haiku. If you haven't cared for my previous poems, today's will be different so it's up to you whether that's a good or a bad thing. Late, but just on time in central time!



For sale: Ranch style home on large wooded lot. Neighborhood built in the seventies. Well established trees. Live oak and cedar elm; tower high above. This was the yard where children played and grew. Now overgrown; green berries growing on thorny vines. This is the yard where the family pets were buried. Here is the creek with the dead snake that made girls run down the road back home. Here is the yard where friends lay on a trampoline and watched a family of skunks saunter down the creek. Here is the barbed wire that snagged clothes. Here is the cow pasture where the youngest girl explored on her own. Here is the hidden pond, a magical place far down on the creek. Here finally, is a spring that still flows over algae growing on concrete.

Nature and farmland
Now developed give way to
Tight suburbia

Keep on writing; we are almost half-way! 

-Sharon

Update 4/17/2018 - I was messing around with my blog and noticed this post was all highlighted in white. It's a weird formatting thing that happens when I've copied and pasted text from somewhere (the quoted text from the NaPo prompt). Ugh. But it's a deeper formatting issue . . . I didn't catch it til now; so I just fixed it. Too bad, because I had liked this poem. Ugh. Oh well.

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 11

April 11th
A poem that addresses the future. See the link above for more specifics on the prompt.


Blooming Takes Time

The future used to be certain
A wife
A mother
A successful career
Strong
Independent

But now the future is uncertain
I guess that is true for everyone.

I am afraid.

Uncertainty scares me.

And so does change.

The fortune from the Chinese restaurant reads:
"There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but only one view."
What does that even mean?
All roads lead to the same place?
There are many paths to success but the results are all the same.

But which path do I take?

Which one is not obscured?

Should I double back
And start again?

Even though that will mean
Lost resources
Time
Money
Respect in the eyes of my loved ones.


Or should I forge ahead
On this same path that I chose
Many years ago.
(Eleven?)
For the past three I've struggled
Made no headway at all
I've come to a dead end

And I'm not sure if its even passible
To forge ahead.

I feel that I should double back
Start anew

I've got so much to prove.

I'm not dead on the vine.
Failure to thrive.
Failure to launch.
I'm doing just fine.

I bloom where I'm planted

But sometimes
Blooming takes time.